ICYMI: Another week of Republicans shattering norms; rewriting history & ignoring the law.
While Democrats are improving lives, growing businesses, expanding our liberty, and governing with the best of American values.
In Florida, Ron DeSantis signed a terrible bill that deeply damages higher education. He claims the bill ends discrimination by banning DEI or any discussion of the lasting impact of historic racism in America. He is confusing ending the discussion of discrimination with ending the thing itself. With this and other laws, he is imposing a state ideology while telling everyone he is banning politics and ideology from organizations that get state funds. These are lies autocrats tell.
Over in the US House, the Republicans showed naked pictures of Hunter Biden as part of committee meeting. These same folks are supporters of state efforts to ban books they think young people are too sensitive to see. But hypocrisy aside, what legislative purposes are met by blowing up naked pics of Hunter?
There is none. It is just MAGA pornography: COVID conspiracies. Election conspiracies. Biden conspiracies. Clinton conspiracies. Pizza parlor conspiracies… They get excited about this stuff like a 15 year old boy discovering pornhub.
None of it results in better laws, or a more competitive America, or a fairer society. Nothing they do holds anyone accountable for actual misbehavior. They do not contribute to national defense. They do not strengthen democracy.
As a reminder, Republicans swore an oath. And that oath is to a constitution that was ordained “to establish Justice, ensure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, or secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity.” Like so much else, their oaths were lies.
Another week of lies & conspiracy theories
This past week we also learned that Speaker McCarthy secretly promised Donald Trump that the House would expunge his two impeachments. How does that help create a more perfect union?
It does not. But it does comport with their habit of erasing and then re-writing history as fiction. Which brings me back to Florida. The higher ed attack is bad, but what is happening to our younger children is worse. Mandated curricula now spread dangerous lies. In Florida they did this: they are requiring children be taught that slavery was, in many ways, good for the enslaved. DeSantis even had a press conference where he and several other white men doubled down on this madness. Meanwhile, a teacher gets fired for even hinting that all those years of slavery left scars on our nation. This is the stuff of Maoist China and Stalinist Russia: the habit of dictators, not the education of a free and curious people.
In short, there was nothing new this week. We already know who these people are. We just saw more of the same. Each week, until we beat them, it will be more of the same. Tearing down a great nation.
These people, they hate our beautiful country. They are not patriots. They are cowards and liars and bullies. They want you to think the country is more divided than ever. They want you to think we are polarized. And that their side is bigger and destined to prevail.
Nope.
America it not more divided than before
We are not more divided now than we were when Black Americans could not vote. Or when women could not work outside the home. We are not more divided now than we were when company funded Pinkertons shot workers who dared to demand a living wage. No. we are not.
Today vast majorities of Americans stand together in favor of things like reproductive choice, common sense gun safety laws, a speedy transition away from climate destroying fossil fuels, and we even stand together in favor of strong democratic institutions.
We only look divided because a small but politically empowered cult, a subculture really, has radicalized and taken over a great American political party and, disastrously, our Supreme Court.
Radical red states
Lawless Kay Ivey, Governor of Alabama, this week signed into law an election map that MAGA’s own Supreme Court already said was a violation of the voting rights act. Again, not news. We know they don’t care about the law.
In Texas, Governor Abbott ordered troopers to push children and pregnant women into the Rio Grande to drown. That was after he floated razor wire buoys in the water. Meanwhile, Republicans refuse to pass an immigration bill to address the real problems posed by global migration to our borders. They would rather just let cruelty do its work.
The great majority of Americans know this: We cannot be a great nation and a hateful one at the same time. Meanwhile, fearless leader’s legal noose tightens, and his desperation grows by the day.
We should all cheer that our country is still a place where the justice system presumes Mr. Trump’ innocence until proven otherwise. Even with that presumption firmly in place, courts ruled against him scores of times about the last election. They found his company guilty of financial malfeasance and him guilty of sexual assault and libel. Yet our judicial system will continue to presume him innocent each time he is charged with a new crime. We can only wonder what’s coming next— espionage, sedition, RICO, wire fraud, maybe even treason.
The rule of law still stands
That is as it should be- the rule of law is holding despite their attack. But Mr. Trump is not entitled to the same presumption by the general public. We have enough evidence of his cupidity, his cruelty, his canards, to wish him a speedy trip to prison for the rest of his days.
And all of this? All of it is a terrible distraction from the hard work we need to do to lead in this dangerous world. And that’s the thing. Nothing that has anything to do with this crowd moves our beautiful country forward. None of it. And it is not news; it is just the constant background noise to real work.
For both real work and news, see Minnesota or Michigan where Democrats are improving lives, growing businesses, expanding our liberty, and governing with the best of American values. Or pay attention to results of the Biden Administration’s implementation of the laws passed by the last Democratic Congress. The best post pandemic economic recovery, the most effective effort to slow inflation, rising real wages, massive private investment in advanced manufacturing. For real work, see Finland now in NATO, and a resurgent democratic response to Russian aggression.